97-109-107 / mutterer

Mutterer - centralise and automate your client-side email configuration

Mutterer

Centralise and automate your client-side email configuration.

Mutterer is a tool to let you generate your email configuration for mutt, offlineimap, msmtp for all your email accounts from a single muttererrc configuration file.

To make automation possible, it translates the central configuration file to bash, so you can use the full power of bash within your config.

It was created from the observation that a lot of configuration code is redundant amongst these three programs as well as amongst the various accounts one may possess (if you're like me and have several accounts).

Here is an example muttererrc file to show how simple it is to get going with Mutterer:

[general]
imap.accounts = john,JMan

[groups]
defaults       = john JMan
defaults_extra = %defaults
main_account   = john

[accounts %defaults]
folder=${MDIR:-~/.mail/}

[account john]
name                  = John Doe
address               = [e-mail]
password              = mypassword
imap_host             = imap.mycompany.example.com
smtp_host             = smtp.mycompany.example.com:465
smtp.tls              = on
smtp.tls_starttls     = on
account_key           = j
mutt.color status     = black white

[account JMan]
name                  = JMan
address               = [e-mail]
password              = mypassword
account_key           = J
mutt.color status     = black magenta
# The gmail preset will detect good defaults for imap and smtp here

lists.Mutt            = [e-mail]


. all

And that's all there is to it for msmtp and offlineimap. For mutt, you'll probably want to define your own global (as opposed to account-specific) shortcuts in your /.mutt/muttrc which will be included from the main generated config file (/.muttrc).

What you get from this config file is:

• IMAP and SMTP setup. Notice how there is no need to explicitly define anything relating to imap or smtp for gmail since these are automatically configured by the 'all' script included in the last line.
• Shortcut to switch to each account's inbox ("gj" for "john" and "gJ" for "JMan"). The shortcut prefix key ("g" by default) is modifiable.
• Shortcut to switch to various basic boxes for each user (by default: "_j": junk/spam, "_t": trash, "_s": sent, "_i": inbox, "_d": drafts). to switch
• Shortcut ('S') to sync the currently focused account with offlineimap.
• Different status bar colour depending on the account you are currently in.
• Mailing list organisation using mutt macros and hooks only, thanks to the "lists" preset. Here, emails from the mutt-users mailing list will be automatically saved to JMan/Mutt when entering JMan's inbox. This works differently from Mutt's mbox-hook system; see presets/lists for details.
• Other small details. See presets/{all,defaults,detect} for more details.

Note also that this program has a fairly modular design and it should therefore be pretty easy to add support for other clients or tools. For instance, adding support for an indexer such as NotMuch or other methods of accessing POP3 or IMAP.

Installation

WARNING: running mutterer will overwrite your previous ~/.muttrc, ~/.offlineimaprc, and ~/.msmtprc so make a backup first!

First, get mutt (I recommend mutt-patched if you're on debian), offlineimap and msmtp. You'll also need asciidoc to generate the documentation.

Now, just clone the repository, and from inside it, run "make" to generate the man pages, followed by "(sudo) make install". Or if you don't want to install it, you can just run the "mutterer" script directly from the repository's directory.

Create a ~/.muttererrc, using doc/muttererrc.example as inspiration and get going with "mutterer install" (see above WARNING first).

Contributing

The simplest way you can help is by contributing presets for various email providers. See "presets/detect".

Currently supported email domains are:

• gmx.com, gmx.us
• outlook.com, live.com, hotmail.*
• gmail.com

To contribute code, see "doc/CodingStyle.md".